China became a giant, it took advantage of the agreements signed and through its full or partial entry in regional groups it had access to the markets, to vanguard knowledge and benefited from huge foreign investment thus educated its human capital. Diversification and manufacturing technology were given prime importance and there was strong investment in its commercial and urban infrastructure. China never fully accepted the requisites of Western institutions, even as it underlined the legitimacy of the “Chinese Model”. It even berated the international economic system on its unipolarity and inefficiency and proposed new instruments of inter and transregional cooperation to developing countries, based on the principles of the welfare of all, non-interference in internal matters, respect for sovereignty and large scale flexible cooperation.
The idea of joining China with Europe to soft finance infrastructure megaprojects which would fill the physical connectivity and digital gaps was the result of a series of internal development policies which prioritized the development of productive forces, the strengthening of the Chinese frontier with the West, the development of far flung regions, social stability and the control of religious extremism, besides ensuring vistas for the expansion of Chinese financial and business corporations.6 One Belt One Road (OBOR), or the Border and Road Initiative (BRI), makes public and formalizes China’s advance over the Eurasian landscape, its geostrategic relocation in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. The reclamation of the Silk Route, apart from giving a new narrative to Asia as a continent that is slowly recovering its central position, awakens a hope of more equitable financing alternatives in countries that have serious connectivity gaps. Many Asian and African economies have their own version of this history and remember the induced indebtedness which characterized earlier hegemonies.
BRI forces us to examine the category of development or economic corridors amply described in this book by the researchers Jerónimo Delgado and Pankaj K Jha, in Chapters 2 and 4. Corridors are spatial development strategies that coordinate competitive connectivity efforts in different fields. They bring the strategic points of production, logistics and supply closer to urban centres where there is a secure demand. Megaprojects result in corridors with diverse objectives: transport corridors, storage and logistical corridors, corridors for energy security and maritime and communication corridors amongst others. They link the special economic zones (ZEE) that have proliferated in the world as scenarios of relocation of production with new urban centres, intelligent cities, maritime infrastructure networks, railways and aerospace nets, while new financial flows are privileged. Plurilateralism, territorial development, normative flexibility and hyperglobalisation will take on the world (Khanna, 2017, p. 62).
Five centuries of Western domination have given way to a new power sharing and in this context, the trade war rumbling between the US and China has hit the most important bastion of modern globalization, free trade, threatened by a protectionist backlash led by the big economic powers, a kind of nationalist reawakening, the shielding of borders, but above all a scenario where Latin America has to play the strategic game. In such a scenario which writers analyse from different geographical areas and socio-political perspectives, unconditional affiliations to the West or to China do not hold good anymore. Ideological passion is uncalled for, but so is inactivity. Both extremes take refuge in a weak multilateral scenario, the calls for the implementation of a new world architecture sound like shots in the dark, while big data technologies, artificial intelligence, and connectivity instruments become consolidated like the new weapons and lead to new alignments where principles give way to calculations on a chessboard of temporary coalitions. The higher organs of multilateralism, whose most prestigious trade institutions have come under the scanner are impotent, just like a watery regionalism hindered by the difficulty of obtaining consensus which would allow for a better redistribution of wealth. How is Latin America preparing itself for the new world map? It is a question which we should begin to answer from this moment on and actively face the future, not postpone it for the last and become like spectators who cannot see the stage and have to improvise their own meanings.
6. ON THE AUTHORS AND THEIR VISION OF CORRIDORS AND BRI
Alexander Arciniegas, research professor of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Santander in Colombia, opens this selection of chapters with an historical overview of the political and economic ascent of Communist China to enable the non-specialist reader to contextualize the phenomenon, and understand its geopolitical dimension. Arciniegas describes the China BRI Initiative, in order to evidence this country’s desire to lead the transformation of the international order and influence the balance of power in its natural arena of Central Asia and South Asia where India has been the natural hegemon.
Pankaj K Jha, associate professor of strategic defense at Jindal Global University in New Delhi, has a chapter on “India’s Economic Corridors and Sub-Regional Connectivity Challenges and Prospects”. Here he deals with the evolution of economic corridors in India as a State decision and a national connectivity strategy and the inclusion of the majority in the last decade. Why must the largest democracy in the world focus its efforts on overcoming the functional infrastructure deficit? This question forms the crux of his analysis. After dwelling on the different theoretical perspectives, he calls attention to the industrial development and social inclusion aspirations of the only country in the region which can serve as a counterweight to Chinese aspirations. Jha presents an India in the throes of a complete physical and productive transformation heretofore unknown in the West. He analyses the challenges that have been met through the main megaprojects in the country, road networks such as the Golden Triangle and those that link the four cardinal points of the Indian subcontinent and join the traditional economic centres with those that are new. He presents the Sagarmala project that has advanced with the development of maritime coasts and the modernization of port infrastructure and writes about the construction of rail corridors exclusively to transport cargo adding to riverine connectivity. These stakes in infrastructure, despite the difficulties in terms of implementation and development of adjacent areas, pay dividends in the national and subregional ambits. The connectivity inside the land mass territory of India connects its neighbours to the Indian Ocean and also favors the SAARC group of countries, even as it strengthens India’s position in the deepening of initiatives like the India-Mekong economic corridor, the Indo-Pacific initiative, and those that join Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and China (BBIN) and (BCIN).
In the chapter “Chinese Capital Flows to Africa in a Context of the Silk Road”, Alicia Girón, researcher at the Autonomous University of Mexico, concentrates on Africa and through the capital accumulation theory explains the behaviour of Chinese Banks and the expansion of companies in this region. She presents the effects of the growing indebtedness of the beneficiary African states and the risks that other economies can also prevent if they decide to be part of the BRI initiative. The arguments refer to China’s ability during the 2008 crisis to configure propitious scenarios for the exit of financial corporations from their territory and their metamorphosis into global companies at a time when the international economy was being transformed and a “capitalist model that administered money” today perceived